Sitting quietly, disguised with new yellow siding and green shutters, the Andrew Jackson Upton House has stood at the corner of Peachtree and Grayson streets in Upton since before troops invaded during the Civil War.

Built in 1851 by Andrew Jackson Upton, grandson of the town’s founder, the Upton House holds an interesting history.

During the time that the Andrew Jackson Upton family lived in the house, it boasted several innovations.

Hardin Memorial Hospital’s Family Care Center in Magnolia has a new face.

Kimberly Gambino recently accepted the position as the overseeing provider at the clinic. She is a certified family nurse practitioner who received her Master of Science in Nursing at Western Kentucky University in 2008. She is working on a doctorate from Bellarmine University in Louisville. She hopes to complete this step in her education and career by next spring.

Gambino also teaches a class of nursing students at St. Catharine College in Bardstown.

Magnolia began as a stage coach stop along the Louisville-Nashville Turnpike about 1850. The first house in the vicinity was built prior to 1840. A post office was established in April 1851. Postmaster David Harris named the post office in honor of his wife. After the Civil War, the post office was moved to its present site in a community then known as Center Point, but which soon took the name of the post office, Magnolia.

Magnolia began as a stagecoach stop along the Louisville-Nashville Turnpike about 1850. It gained its first post office in 1851 which was named after Postmaster David Harris’ wife.

After the Civil War, the post office was moved to the town of Centerpoint, but the name reverted to Magnolia.

The Old Providence Church, later Magnolia Cumberland Presbyterian Church, was built in the 1840s. Soon, several stores were established and the town began to grow. In the mid-1870s Magnolia had a population of 30. The 2010 census places the number at about 500.

A Magnolia native was one of the first inductees of the Kentucky Human Rights Commission Hall of Fame in 2000.

Arthur Meredith Walters is most recognized for his role as the Louisville Urban League executive director from 1970 to 1987. The Louisville Urban League’s mission is to assist African-American and disadvantaged persons in the achievement of social and economic equality primarily through education, employment, housing, family development, and community development.

The Ragland name is one that you hear often in LaRue County. But few people know how deep those roots grow.

Gideon Ragland relocated to Center Point, what is now Magnolia from Virginia in December 1808. He purchased 1,000 acres of land for $1,000 partly with monies from a Revolutionary War grant. This was the same month that Thomas Lincoln purchased the farm at Sinking Springs, mere months before the birth of Abraham Lincoln.